Café Lumière
Written by Hou Hsiao-Hsien & Chu T’ien-wen
Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Wild Bunch
2005
Rating:


Dedicated to "the centenary of Yasujiro Ozu's birth," Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Tokyo-set "Café Lumière" is a fitting tribute to the Japanese master of cinematic minimalism.

Like the work of Ozu, Hou's films focus on the oppression of the past and tradition, the transitory nature of the present and the uncertainty of the future. Hou uses references to Ozu's "Tokyo Story," "An Autumn Afternoon," "Equinox Flower," "Late Spring" and "Late Autumn" to tell his story of a young reporter, Yoko (Yo Hitoto), coping with an unexpected pregnancy and parents who disapprove of her decision to have the child out of wedlock. Like the harried wife in "An Autumn Afternoon," Yoko has no intention of becoming a traditional housewife — a fate that has befallen her repressed stepmother (Kimiko Yo) — or working in the factory of her boyfriend's umbrella factory. Yoko would prefer to continue her research on classical pianist Jiang Wen-Ye. (As a musician born in Taiwan who became popular in Japan, Jiang serves as a metaphor for Hou's relationship with Ozu's country.)

Yoko's waning interest in her Taiwanese boyfriend may also have to do with a developing crush on bookstore keeper and modern artist Hajime ("Ichi the Killer's" Tadanobu Asano). Hajime understands Yoko better than anyone around her, and can even interpret her pregnancy nightmares as relating to Yoko's childhood reading of Maurice Sendak's "Outside Over There."

Ozu's films are socially conscious, openly addressing the unease of post-World War II Japan. Hou updates Ozu, displaying the distance between people in modernized Tokyo. The struggle for women to assert themselves remains as difficult as it was in Ozu's day.

Hou maintains the train obsession of Ozu's "Tokyo Story" ("Café Lumière" refers to the early silent film by the Lumière Brothers of a train pulling into a station), but he outdoes the Japanese director with his beautiful, daring rendering of the trains. In one technical marvel of a shot, Hou's camera looks through the window of a moving train and sees Hajime in the window of a passing train. The camera follows Hajime until it lands on Yoko in the corner. The shot is not only breathtaking; it speaks to the missed connections and detachment of Yoko, Hajime and the other inhabitants of modern Toyko. The final shot of trains circling a small river, a shot that recalls Hajime's art work, transforms the dread of disconnection into hope — the trains also serve to connect them.

Posted Thursday, January 12, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/cafe.lumiere